seems you all are missing the rationale. It's for sure NOT for the NAME of something.
Use standard Debian ->

• mafw: none -> Mediaplayer OpenMediaplayer, Gallery: gone
• alsaped: none -> consistent handling of audio in all situations, for all sources and sinks: gone
• PA XPROT: none -> sooner or later your speakers blow up (unless we fix that on hw level).
• standard upstream kernel -> optimized power handling of maemo kernel: gone; standby time: abysmal (watch out! oversimplified picture - power handling depends on whole system)
• MCE (and all the stuff it needs, like dsme etc pp): none -> complete state control (ringtone, vibra, indicator LED, screen lock, orientation, backlight brightness): gone
• HAL-addon-bme & friends: none -> proper battery monitoring, low-bat warnings, clean shutdown: gone
• liblocation: none -> all location aware apps: gone

and so on and on (probably I missed to list 60..80% in that enumeration)

We use fremantle since it's mature and been tested for 4 years now, basing on chinook and diablo. We know it's working. We don't want to invent yet another system. If you want to do exactly that, you're of course free to do that but at least anything in context of Neo900 is clearly meant to give fremantle and all the apps made for fremantle a new life.
You might have missed that detail, but to me it seems Harmattan (N9) and even Sailfish (Jolla) are using pretty much every single detail of the subsystems I listed or missed to list above. Guess why! While other distros use exactly zero of all those.

PS: Maemo is Debian, with several special tweaks on top. So where's the rationale to use "standard Debian" (I.E. a maemo with all special maemo tweaks stripped) and do the tweaks again? There actually IS a rationale, when you call that process ReverseEngineering and do it for the closed blobs only, while keeping the FOSS parts that turn Debian into Maemo. "why buy a 4WD model? Wasn't it easier to buy the standard model and mount something to it that drives the front two wheels as well?"